🚀 go-pugleaf

***** Nobody knows the lines I've eaten - song title *****

It's about time I make another comment on the jolly black power supplies. A
couple of days ago, my TOS ROM(s) blew. I deduced this from the fact that
all went well with the old chips replaced. It took a week for the new chips
to stop working. But I gather that these ROMs are really Eproms which happen to
be opaque, which makes them somewhat vulnerable to the dreaded power supply
surge.
   Now the people who told me about the power supply scandal have consequently
informed me that a very simple test will determine whether the power supply
is of the evil variety, without having to wait for disaster to visit. It
seems that with zero load, a humble voltmeter will demonstrate the true
nature of the thing. So this would indicate that the same fault that causes
sub-optimal start-up characteristics also causes inappropriate response to
zero load. If so, this would help prevent a lot of indecision about what to
do with "the black power supplies".

***** The lines that ate Paris - film title *****

	I've just been shopping around for world ST prices, and these are the
results:
	In Australia, the standard B/W system that costs some $700 or so
here, costs A$2150 x .704 = US$1510. And the government only takes 20%.
Someone is making a big profit over there! But then I suppose some sort of
voltage conversion has to be made.
	In Germany, the cost is DM2898 x .444 = US$1285 for the 1 Meg system
with German keyboard and TOS on disk (still!), and the double sided disk
drive. That's the 520ST+ that has been mentioned here before.
	But in Germany now, it seems they have a 1040STS or something, with
a built-in double-sided floppy for DM3298 x .444 = US1465. And these two
are also just the B/W system. 
	The good news for anyone going to these exotic places is that
according to the Atari person who answered the phone in CA, the American
version will run on 50Hz with a transformer, but that the keyboard clock
will run at 5/6 speed!!! Doesn't this suggest that some crucial part of the
keyboard circuit can be replaced with a German part to make it run at the
speed?
	It's very clear to me now that the best policy is to buy here
and use a transformer overseas. 
	Can anyone say whether STs have got beyond the US, Canada, UK, Germany
Australia and Switzerland? The Bios listing suggests a French version, but
that could conceivably have gone only to Quebec. Perhaps the English
language component of TOS will be rejected by the Ministry of Culture.
And what is this new French computer language coming out soon? I've seen
a sample of French Basic. If anyone has a copy of French Basic for the ST
I would gladly know about it.
...................ak.

In article <2898@ukma.UUCP> knnngt@ukma.UUCP (Alan Kennington) writes:
>The Bios listing suggests a French version, but
>that could conceivably have gone only to Quebec. Perhaps the English
>language component of TOS will be rejected by the Ministry of Culture.
>And what is this new French computer language coming out soon? I've seen
>a sample of French Basic. If anyone has a copy of French Basic for the ST
>I would gladly know about it.

This French version of the Bios (looking carefully at it)
actually uses an AZERTY keyboard -- same logic as with QWERTY, those are
the first letters in the top row.  This keyboard layout is not used in Quebec,
or in French Canada for that matter, we use a bilingual QWERTY keyboard.
This presents an interesting problem as this latter keyboard possesses
a dead key -- you type a ` or a ^ and the carriage (or cursor) does not advance,
allowing you to overstrike with the letter you want accented.  This is
fine for typewriters, but is a ****&&*** for computers. The difference
between the AZERTY keyboard and the bilingual QWERTY actually delayed the
introduction of a French ST in Quebec. (Should be available by now, I haven't
checked.) 
	About French Basic; with a 'decent' BASIC, they only thing needed to
"frenchise" it is to change the token lookup tables.  I haven't looked
at the internals of STBasic but I presume it can be done in a similar fashion.
My experience is that it is not worth the trouble -- you learn a few
odd words (odd for non-anglophones), and you're ready to go.  This is
nothing compared to learning a human language.  You get used to seeing
bilingual code -- variables and comments in French, the keywords in English.
It also helps to identity the parts of your code that got borrowed from
the net.
-- 
Je'ro^me M. Lang	   ||				    jmlang@water.uucp
Dept of Applied Math       ||			  jmlang%water@waterloo.csnet
U of Waterloo		   ||  	 jmlang%water%waterloo.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa

The ST ikbd (intelligent keyboard) microcontroller derives its timing
information from the crystal clock, not the power line frequency, so it
will be the same world-wide.

I should point out that the ST power supply only provides DC voltages to
ST power connector... so the ST's keyboard would not know what the power
line frequency was.